YEREVAN (ArmRadio)-The Armenia-Turkey protocols have harmed efforts at gaining international recognition for the Armenian Genocide, Armenian Revolutionary Federation political director Giro Manoyan said Friday, ArmRadio reported.

"In order to continue the process of international recognition of the Armenian Genocide, it's first of all necessary to understand what the year 2009 gave us and what it took away from us," Manoyan told ArmRadio, describing the last year as one of political losses for Armenia.

To succeed in 2010 on the genocide recognition front, Manoyan said, that it is necessary for Armenia "to declare that the process of international recognition of the Armenian Genocide is in no way related to the Armenian-Turkish negotiations."

The rapprochement between Turkey and Armenia, which came to a head on October 10, 2009 with the signing of protocols for normalizing relations and opening borders, gave US President Barack Obama the opportunity he needed to refrain from using the word Genocide in his April 24 address, Manoyan explained, pointing to the official US rationalization that recognizing the Genocide would torpedo negotiations between Armenia and Turkey.

Despite these concerns, Ruben Safrastyan, the director of Armenia's Oriental Studies Institute at the National Academy of Sciences believes the protocols have not impacted the cause of Genocide recognition.

Safrastyan told ArmRadio that the process of gaining recognition for the Armenian Genocide "is not endangered. It will continue, promising to yield results in the near future."

He said the "protocols have neither hindered nor aborted the process of international recognition of the Armenian Genocide."